China’s rapidly expanding space sector demonstrated its growing launch capacity last week, with four different orbital rockets lifting off within a span of just 45 hours from three separate launch sites.<\/p>\n
The launch sequence, which took place between September 15 and 16, involved both state-owned and privately developed rockets.<\/p>\n
All four missions successfully delivered their payloads into orbit, highlighting the diversity of China’s launch vehicles and the country’s growing ability to support high-frequency satellite deployments.<\/p>\n
The first launch came early on September 15, when LandSpace’s Zhuque-2E lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China.<\/p>\n
The privately developed rocket, powered by liquid methane and liquid oxygen, carried 10 satellites into low Earth orbit for China’s Qianfan, or Thousand Sails, broadband megaconstellation.<\/p>\n
Qianfan is planned to eventually comprise around 15,000 active satellites, making frequent and reliable launches essential for building the network.<\/p>\n
Later the same day, Orienspace’s Gravity-1 launched nine more Qianfan satellites from a sea-based platform off Shanghai. The rocket, known for its unusually short and wide design, is currently described as the world’s most powerful solid-fuel rocket.<\/p>\n
The third launch involved the state-owned Long March 12, which lifted off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on Hainan Island. It carried nine spacecraft for China’s other major low-Earth-orbit broadband network, known as SatNet, which is planned to eventually include around 13,000 satellites.<\/p>\n
The rapid-fire launch campaign concluded with a Kuaizhou-11 rocket launching from Jiuquan. Operated by a subsidiary of the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, the rocket carried two Earth-observation radar satellites for Chinese company Spacety.<\/p>\n
The four missions also underscore the growing role of private companies in China’s space programme. Two of the rockets in the sequence were developed and operated by private-sector companies, while the other two were linked to state-owned aerospace organisations.<\/p>\n
However, none of the four missions attempted to recover and reuse their rocket stages.<\/p>\n
China is nevertheless making progress in reusable launch technology.<\/p>\n
In recent months, LandSpace’s Zhuque-3 and CASC’s Long March 10B have successfully demonstrated first-stage landings during orbital missions, marking an important step towards more frequent and potentially lower-cost spaceflight.<\/p>\n
– Ends<\/p>\n
Published By: <\/p>\n
Sibu Kumar Tripathi<\/p>\n
Published On: <\/p>\n
Sep 21, 2026 11:54 IST<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China’s rapidly expanding space sector demonstrated its growing launch capacity last week, with four different orbital rockets lifting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[267913,267912,61,60,267917,267915,134348,267916,213340,267918,267914,82,247,267919],"class_list":["post-631229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-china-rocket-launches","tag-china-space-programme","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kuaizhou-11","tag-landspace-zhuque-2e","tag-long-march-12","tag-orienspace-gravity-1","tag-qianfan-constellation","tag-reusable-launch-technology","tag-satnet-constellation","tag-science","tag-space","tag-spacety-radar-satellites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}